Public Music Discourse: In Honor of the Bernstein Centenary

Through his Thursday Evening Previews, Young People’s Concerts, Omnibus television programs, and in other venues, Leonard Bernstein demonstrated a voracious appetite for communicating with the public about music and music making. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, the University of South Carolina School of Music in Columbia, SC hosts a conference devoted to the topic of public music discourse, March 2–3, 2018. It is our goal to bring music theorists, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, composers, performers, music educators, music journalists, arts administrators, program annotators, and others together to talk about public engagement in musical topics of all kinds. Conference attendees also have the rare opportunity to see a fully-staged performance of Leonard Bernstein’s monumental composition, MASS, produced by the USC School of Music’s Opera at USC, USC Symphony, Choirs and Jazz program.